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Essentially all existing gridscale battery deployments are for voltage or frequency support, not for meaningful energy storage. That is, they do not discharge t

Essentially all existing gridscale battery deployments are for voltage or frequency support, not for meaningful energy storage. That is, they do not discharge to provide scheduled generation but instead to alleviate very short term flow problems or transmission congestion. That's all good stuff and I've been involved in planning out several such installations with utility executives, but the basic question of energy density is always going to dictate whether or not a battery installation can be be scaled up to offset a generator by timeshifting surplus generation to when the load exists for it. A moderate size city can easily pull GWh. The sum total of all current grid scale installations in California would cover the Western Interconnect for something like .0002 seconds if you handwave transmission.

battery_cowboy 6y ago
You're mostly incorrect here, most grid scale installations are for DCM and local capacity in areas where the grid is oversubscribed. You're correct that current storage capacity is small but there are a lot of companies installing storage so that'll change quickly. The software works fine for this stuff, too, I wrote some of it at one company, it's not a hard software problem at all.
- ThomPete 6y ago
  Please point to a single place where this works at scale. It's wishful thinking.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
epistasis 6y ago
When it comes to batteries, energy density is not a concern, it's only cost. Cost has been high enough that frequency regulation has been the biggest use. Cost is still high enough that uses from multiple revenue streams will be necessary to fully recoup costs, except in fantastically fucked up markets like where the Tesla battery went in Australia. But the writing is on the wall. Looking at current usages, and current market penetration, and thinking its reflective of the future is exactly what Palm did when the iPhone came out. Costs are falling exponentially, but the switchover will be happen much faster than the price change once storage is cheaper than its alternatives, it's a non-linearity. We are already seeing a lot of bids for future solar and wind installs including storage, and then bidding on capacity payments, which is a sea change from even two years ago. Utilities, if they were more forward looking, could be using this technology switch as an opportunity to massively increase their profits. Unfortunately, nearly all I've heard of are instead living in the past and don't want to accept a world where they have to anticipate advancing and improving technology, and are scared of losing the lobbying power that comes from a tight alliance with fossil fuels. It's perhaps good to have stolid and conservative leadership in something as essential as utilities, but at some point ignoring new tech becomes more dangerous and radical than trying to embrace it.
- ThomPete 6y ago
  Density is a problem and that doesn't go away by saying it's just an economic problem. Heat is just one example of a problem with density. Again there is a lot of wishful thinking out there but the second you dig into it you realize there is nothing substantial, unfortunately. You are more than welcome to send me any link to something that is even close to be ready for production and scale. You won't find it. What you will find is that places like Denmark and Germany cost go up because you need backup in the forms of oil, coal, gas, or nuclear which needs to be factored in. There is no way around that.
  - epistasis 6y ago
    This is the third time in a few days that I've heard the completely fabricated concern of "energy density" being a problem for grid storage. It's ridiculous, where is this false talking point coming from? Repeating it merely shows that you are willing to propagate politics without checking facts. The old AES deployment in Escondido, CA fits 5MWh in a shipping container. Let's say 250MWh per acre, with a single layer of containers. Or just look at a typical Tesla, which can power the owner's house for several days, using a tiny fraction of their garage. Battery storage can be deployed at substations, at decommissioned thermal-based generators, etc. I really wonder what sort of political industry rag has been spreading this "energy density" nonsense. If the people saying this were accountable enough for their words to be held to them in five years, they would look rather silly.
    - ThomPete 6y ago
      I'll gladly own my words for 5 years. Lets meet in 5 and see. I have been accountable for my words for a long time now, more than 5 years. And I have still to see any of your claims come to fruition. Go back 5 years and you will see people claiming what you are claiming now. It's just not that simple. We are talking at scale here not just some Tesla projects for the 1st world or a few pilot projects paid for by governments. Density is a serious issue for any serious storage of energy on top of that getting the energy from the renewables into the storage. If it wasn't we would be living in a very different world. Economics isn't the problem here, feasibility is and the fact that we don't have any serious examples of what you claim is no problem kind of illustrates the point more than claiming it's a quesiton of conservative utillity execs. You have zero base for those claims.

battery_cowboy 6y ago

You're mostly incorrect here, most grid scale installations are for DCM and local capacity in areas where the grid is oversubscribed. You're correct that current storage capacity is small but there are a lot of companies installing storage so that'll change quickly. The software works fine for this stuff, too, I wrote some of it at one company, it's not a hard software problem at all.

ThomPete 6y ago
Please point to a single place where this works at scale. It's wishful thinking.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

epistasis 6y ago

When it comes to batteries, energy density is not a concern, it's only cost. Cost has been high enough that frequency regulation has been the biggest use. Cost is still high enough that uses from multiple revenue streams will be necessary to fully recoup costs, except in fantastically fucked up markets like where the Tesla battery went in Australia. But the writing is on the wall. Looking at current usages, and current market penetration, and thinking its reflective of the future is exactly what Palm did when the iPhone came out. Costs are falling exponentially, but the switchover will be happen much faster than the price change once storage is cheaper than its alternatives, it's a non-linearity. We are already seeing a lot of bids for future solar and wind installs including storage, and then bidding on capacity payments, which is a sea change from even two years ago. Utilities, if they were more forward looking, could be using this technology switch as an opportunity to massively increase their profits. Unfortunately, nearly all I've heard of are instead living in the past and don't want to accept a world where they have to anticipate advancing and improving technology, and are scared of losing the lobbying power that comes from a tight alliance with fossil fuels. It's perhaps good to have stolid and conservative leadership in something as essential as utilities, but at some point ignoring new tech becomes more dangerous and radical than trying to embrace it.

ThomPete 6y ago
Density is a problem and that doesn't go away by saying it's just an economic problem. Heat is just one example of a problem with density. Again there is a lot of wishful thinking out there but the second you dig into it you realize there is nothing substantial, unfortunately. You are more than welcome to send me any link to something that is even close to be ready for production and scale. You won't find it. What you will find is that places like Denmark and Germany cost go up because you need backup in the forms of oil, coal, gas, or nuclear which needs to be factored in. There is no way around that.
- epistasis 6y ago
  This is the third time in a few days that I've heard the completely fabricated concern of "energy density" being a problem for grid storage. It's ridiculous, where is this false talking point coming from? Repeating it merely shows that you are willing to propagate politics without checking facts. The old AES deployment in Escondido, CA fits 5MWh in a shipping container. Let's say 250MWh per acre, with a single layer of containers. Or just look at a typical Tesla, which can power the owner's house for several days, using a tiny fraction of their garage. Battery storage can be deployed at substations, at decommissioned thermal-based generators, etc. I really wonder what sort of political industry rag has been spreading this "energy density" nonsense. If the people saying this were accountable enough for their words to be held to them in five years, they would look rather silly.
  - ThomPete 6y ago
    I'll gladly own my words for 5 years. Lets meet in 5 and see. I have been accountable for my words for a long time now, more than 5 years. And I have still to see any of your claims come to fruition. Go back 5 years and you will see people claiming what you are claiming now. It's just not that simple. We are talking at scale here not just some Tesla projects for the 1st world or a few pilot projects paid for by governments. Density is a serious issue for any serious storage of energy on top of that getting the energy from the renewables into the storage. If it wasn't we would be living in a very different world. Economics isn't the problem here, feasibility is and the fact that we don't have any serious examples of what you claim is no problem kind of illustrates the point more than claiming it's a quesiton of conservative utillity execs. You have zero base for those claims.